Iain Banks Quotes
As long as a film stays unmade, the book is entirely yours, it belongs to the writer. As soon as you make it into a film, suddenly more people see it than have ever read the book.
Dead Air' is full of rants; it's a rant-based book. Yes, it's self-indulgence. I plead guilty; mea culpa.
Even in my side of the world, I've been in publishing for what, 25 or 26 years, and it's gone from being a gentlemen's club to being a few big players, and it's very corporatised.
I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.
There is a quite a lot of effort involved but I find action sequences some of the quickest to write and the most fun.
Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.
A lot of what the 'Culture' is about is a reaction to all the science fiction I was reading in my very early teens.
What's one more meaningless act of violence on that zoo of a planet? It would be appropriate. When in Rome; burn it.
"Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza. "Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival."
I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
"You like music, Mr. Gurgeh?" Hamin asked, leaning over to the man. Gurgeh nodded. "Well, a little does no harm."
You get so caught up in what you're writing - action sequences tend to do that more than anything else because you're living it, and feeling for your characters.
They speak very well of you". - "They speak very well of everybody." - "That so bad?" - "Yes. It means you can´t trust them.
I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.
Well," he sighed to no one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. "Here we are again.
Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!
What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?
I still have some of my old University essays, and I do still have my drawing book from primary year seven.
I'm from out of town," he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place.
He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know better ones.
there is both fear and comfort to be drawn from devils--the fear speaks for itself, the comfort comes from being able to absolve oneself of responsibility for one's actions.
Look on the happy side, think of the good things. Hadn't it been clever? Yes, it had.
Maybe he's up to something, maybe he'ś not really crazy after all. Perhaps he just got fed up acting normal and decided to act crazy instead, and they locked him up because he went too far.
